Compiling for Windows [Was: argv revisited]

[Lucas Levrel <llevrel yahoo fr>]

(copy to OP in case he's already unsubscribed, apologies for duplication 
if he's not)

Le 30 avril 2016, Andrew Robinson a écrit :
> Now my new problem I had was either locating a Win32 version of GTK+ greater
> than v3.18 or locating a version of libglib.dll greater than v2.40. It isn't
> going to happen. The GTK+ project itself does not support Win32 or Win64,
> expecting the developer to install MSYS2 and then ... nothing. The GTK+
> project gives no further instructions on what to do next. Getting the Linux
> binaries for GTK+ in MSYS2 seems easy, but I don't want the Linux binaries, I
> want the Windows binaries. I would compile my own binaries for Windows but
> there is little reliable and complete information out there on how to do it
> and what is there isn't credible. From what I understand, compiling binaries
> for Win32 is a very time consuming and tedious project, so I knew if I had any
> problems compiling it, I would not receive any help from the GTK+ (or probably
> even the GNOME) community in resolving them.

I'm not an expert programmer and when I wanted to compile for Windows the 
software I developped in Linux, I couldn't achieve a satisfactory result 
(using the -mwin32 or -mwindows flag gave either a clumsy additional 
command window, or yielded an antivirus alert!).

Then I found MinGW Cross Env, now called MXE (http://mxe.cc/). It compiled 
my project with no effort at all. When you install it, it compiles the 
cross-compiler and the libs you want, so this takes quite long, but with 
no user intervention. Then all you have to do is add such lines in your 
Linux-ready Makefile:

# prepend all binaries with a later-defined prefix
PKG_CONFIG=$(CROSS)pkg-config
CXX=$(CROSS)g++
LD=$(CROSS)ld
AR=$(CROSS)ar
STRIP=$(CROSS)strip
...
# define the prefix in the rules targeting Windows
myrule : CROSS=/path/to/bin/i686-pc-mingw32-
myrule : ...

HTH

--
Lucas Levrel